The African Executive

Comments made to the African Executive do not appear on the site, so I have decided to keep a log here.

Kenya Must Expand Her Middle Class by Samuel Imende, in The African Executive
If by 'middle class', Imende means business owner-manages and the professional trades, then it is the middle class that must expand itself by creating and building wealth opportunities that can be supported, because benefits and risks are shared, by the governing and by the greater community.

Because wealth does not trickle down unless public governance imposes limits on private markets. Thomas Friedman was wrong. His work at the University of Chicago continues to misinform and misdirect efforts at socio-economic development into mastering global markets rather than the intended ensuring sufficient standards and security of lives and livelihoods. If you think Kenya is bad, wait to see what is coming to the USA: there the top 1% now hold 53% of the stock market wealth (de-facto: of USA's globalisation assets), up from 33% in 1980 when Reagan took the Friedman machete to the USA New Deal.


Food Security: New Technologies Will Save AFrica

Pete Veal is the former MD Syngenta East Africa Limited. He is currently Head of Strategy and Planning for Europe, Africa and Middle-East based in Basel, Switzerland. Syngenta is an "agribusiness" that employs over 21,000 people in some 90 countries worldwide, including many in Africa, South America and Asia.

It is convenient then for Syngenta that

factors are suddenly pushing up the price of basic food items.

or that

food aid entering the local market not only destroys the value of local produce, but also the livelihoods of local farmers, removing their incentive to product.

. He recommends more Green Revolution technology. But that is not likely to benefit African communities who need to guarantee food security.

What Africa needs for food security are local food stocks, guaranteed minimum prices so that farmers can afford a living wage, and more efficient distribution systems. Get rid of food technology multinationals who insist on selling genetically modified 'terminator' seeds that can only grow with massive and continuous doses of their fertilizers, pesticides, technical aid, debt bondage, and corrupting of government.
It is better to cook than to buy a microwave. African countries should stop starving for foreign currency while selling crops to 'global-gambling' markets controlled by export-marketing businesses of these scented multinationals. You already know the small farmers' families of USA's MidWest or India's Pradesh what benefits they got from the latest 'Green Revolution'. Farmer suicides and bankruptcies are up at historical levels. Their children have abandoned poisoned farms and migrated to the cities or abroad.